Category: Connection

We are racing through a living room, on the north side of the house, unsure if this is a game or a real life-or-death situation. My sister has a box in her hands, and she is running from me. The box is plastic, with tiny compartments, each filled with a different type of colorful bead, and her hands are small. My hands are clenched into fists.

Anger billows up out of my armpits, my shoulders, my knees. I sprint faster, finally gaining on my younger sister, Maya, who, in a flash of inspiration, runs up the stairs.

NO. The hot pressure sticks to my ribs, threatening to detonate. A word blooms in my stomach, burrows up through my esophagus, presses against my tongue, digs deep into the crevices of my jaw. I’ve said this word so many times before, in thousands of ways. Sometimes it comes out soft, gentle, imploring, but other times it comes out fighting, harsh, urgent.

I see what is happening in slow motion. That’s not even the right way to describe it. It’s not slow motion. It’s focus. Detached focus. I see what is happening with a focus so clear, it’s as if I am a monk meditating in a Himalayan temple. I know I am about to scream. I know that it is going to be so loud that it will hurt my throat to do it. I know my sister will not be happy about it. I know I will do it anyway.

“MAYAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” I bellow.

Everything stops. She comes to an abrupt halt and looks back at me, full of genuine innocence and hurt. I stand breathing heavily. The anger dissipates. She comes down the stairs. She is deflated, I am deflated, the whole expansive moment is forever deflated.

All I know now is that my sister is sad.

And then it happens. I don’t want her sadness to be my fault. The blame is too much, the guilt overwhelming. I make a pact with myself, then and there, in the pregnant pause between the yelling and her response. I will never scream at my sister again. No matter how angry I get, how much pressure builds up in my body, I won’t let it escape again. 

Ever.

I kept this pact for years, almost perfectly, not just with my sister, but with everyone else in my life.

Until the Ritz cracker incident. 

The next time I let the word “no” escape from the surface of my skin was in a middle school cafeteria. I sat with my stomach pressed up against a round, dark brown, plastic lunch table. My legs fidgeted under the seat as I manically devoured a bag of Ritz crackers, butter and crumbs spreading thick over my fingertips and tongue. We were debating over which deodorant worked best to keep our sixth-grade sweaty armpits dry. You interrupted our discussion with a question: can I have a cracker? you asked.

I froze. I looked at my crackers. I looked at you. 

I was still hungry, and realized suddenly that I didn’t want to give up a single one. Maybe I wanted to eat the rest after school, all by myself. Maybe I wanted to finish the entire roll, right now. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do with them, but it suddenly dawned on me that I could tell you no. That your request did not demand immediate obligation on my part. 

I said no. 

You were surprised, but surrendered. 

Truly, before this moment, I had not considered the possibility that I could refuse a request. In my reality, a request from someone was like water. It filled up the space between us, swiftly and completely, flooding everything in its path. The space was immediately full, heavy and real, belonging solely to the requester. There was no room left for me to add anything of mine. 

There was no room for my no. 

Somewhere along the way, I decided that feeling guilt was more unpleasant than being violated. Somewhere along the way, I decided it was far better to disappoint myself than to disappoint somebody else. I could stand to internalize my own pain. I just couldn’t stand internalizing theirs. 

Allowing myself to fade into the background felt easier than experiencing guilt, which inevitably led to Shame. The belief that I was bad and wrong permeated my body. It crushed me. By permitting the violation instead of the “no,” I successfully avoided Shame. 

In my mind, I was a tiny dot and the other, whoever the other happened to be, was a huge sun. My job, as the miniscule dot, was to relentlessly and passionately throw energy in the sun’s direction so they would not burn out. My job was to make sure they were always taken care of. In my mind, I had signed a contract at birth stipulating that, no matter what the cost, I existed to make sure their light never went out. 

I heeded that contract to the letter. I was a good rule follower. I was “good.” 

My fear of being seen as “bad” always trumped the fear of hurting, or even of dying. And it certainly outweighed the fear of feeling uncomfortable in my own body. I avoided guilt at all costs. If it meant wounding myself in the process, so be it. Whatever it took, I avoided guilt. 

In this way, I avoided shame. 

In this way, I avoided learning how to listen to myself. 

Until the Ritz cracker. This was a big deal. This was in direct violation of the contract I believed I was in with the Universe. 

After I said my no, you looked taken aback. You asked, why won’t you give me one? I want all of them, I mumbled. You leaned your head back and raised your eyebrows in performative incredulity, making sure all of our friends saw how shocked and offended you were. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the scene was over. I kept my Ritz crackers. We were still friends. Everything seemed to be okay. 

Except there, in the center of my chest, there was a sensation blooming. My chest was collapsing, as if a gigantic mudslide coursed down between my ribs, pulling bones, muscle, debris down into the abyss, threatening to take the rest of my body with it. My throat tightened into the size of a tiny coffee stirring straw, and my head felt thick with tension. 

There was a reason I religiously avoided disappointing people. Although I had just committed a revolution by saying no, I still had to deal with the mess of guilt and shame that remained in my body. 

There was no way to escape. My body would never let me.